“And It Happened Like This”: Summary and Unfolding in Biblical Hebrew Narrative Structure

DOI: https://doi.org/10.28977/jbtr.2014.10.35.268 268 성경원문연구 제35호 “And It Happened Like This”: Summary and Unfolding in Biblical Hebrew Narrative Structure Robert A. Bascom* 1. Introduction First we will make a brief digression into biblical poetry: James Kugel titles the opening chapter to his famous work The Idea of Biblical Poetry “The Parallelistic Line: ‘A is so, and what’s more, B’.” He goes on to qualify this in many ways (as there are indeed many kinds of parallel structures in the Hebrew Bible), yet he maintains that the basic structure or parallelism is still this A, what’s more, B pattern: “ ‘What’s more’ is in itself an inexact version of the concept of subjunction. But it has been stressed in the belief that this approach ultimately leads to a proper orientation toward all [poetic] lines.”1) Robert Alter agrees with Kugel in this regard. Alter uses as the basis of his analysis of parallelism those couplets which contain numbers (3,4; 7,8) which he rightly asserts overwhelmingly support an intensification in the second line of biblical Hebrew poetry: “...the logic of numbers in parallel versets is not equivalence but an assertion of a fortiori, ‘how much more so’, and this impulse to intensification is also the motor force in thousands of lines of biblical poetry where no numbers are present.”2) Neither Kugel nor Alter base their arguments for this “motor force” on specific grammatical relationships or structures (though Kugel in particular does make use of grammar for the analysis of specific parallel lines). In any case, most often all the grammatical connection that exists between parallel poetic * Ph.D. in Biblical Studies at Claremont Graduate University. Global Translation Advisor of United Bible Societies. [email protected]. 1) J. Kugel, The Idea of Biblical Poetry (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1981), 1, 57. 2) R. Alter, The Art of Biblical Poetry (New York: Basic Books, 1985), 11. “And It Happened Like This”: Summary and Unfolding in Biblical Hebrew Narrative Structure / Robert A. Bascom 269 lines in biblical Hebrew is a simple vav (“and”). Thus the term “semantic” (and one might add “structural”) parallelism is most often used to describe the most famous element of biblical Hebrew poetry. Apparently all that is needed for the most salient (to this point at least) element of Hebrew biblical poetry is pure structural conjunction combined with semantic subjunction (to use Kugel’s term) of an intensifying kind.3) An example of this can be found in Psalm 38:11, translated in the NRSV as follows: “My friends and companions stand aloof from my affliction, and my neighbors stand far off.” The Good News Translation understands the Hebrew yb;Arq.W not as “neighbors” but as “family”: “My friends and neighbors will not come near me, because of my sores; even my family keeps away from me.” The GNT rendering is consistent with the ‘A is so, and what’s more, B’ understanding of biblical Hebrew parallelism in this verse. And the argument for that understanding is based not on grammar or even so much on lexical semantics per se as on the simple structural and logical relationship of the two lines. This seeming digression from the topic of Hebrew narrative structure into biblical poetry is simply to lay the groundwork for a logical and structural analysis of the texts in question as opposed to a grammatical (or some other methodological) treatment. My point will be that just as with semantic parallelism, simple ordering and repetition of elements combined with content related in some possible logical way(s) is often enough to recognize narrative discourse strategies which in turn can be important for translation. In particular, there are a number of texts (and most likely quite a few more than have been gathered below as first examples) which follow a kind of summary/unfolding narrative pattern. In this pattern, there is a brief summary statement, followed by a detailed unfolding of the narrative. The summary is then repeated later on (in some form), as if to catch the reader up to the story in progress. The “unfolding” section forms a kind of back-story for the summary and the subsequent continuation of the narrative. Often it clarifies the summary/unfolding structure to translate (literally or imaginatively) the equivalent of “and it happened like this”, or a relevant 3) Though important work has been done in biblical Hebrew poetry since the time of Alter and Kugel, the basic outline of semantic (and structural) parallelism has remained unchanged. See for e.g. J. K. Kuntz, “Biblical Hebrew Poetry in Resent Research, Part II”, Currents in Research 7 (1999), 35-79. 270 성경원문연구 제35호 variant. The examples below should illustrate this point clearly. As with semantic parallelism, all that connects the elements of the summary/unfolding structure (if anything at all does) is the simple conjunction “and” (Hebrew vav) which otherwise functions as a straightforward narrative element in the text. This structure is a kind of repetition, and as such takes its place alongside a number of repetitive structures in the Hebrew Bible. Besides semantic parallelism, there are numerous other repeated words and phrases which are used in various literary devices such as inclusio and as means of achieving emphasis. Perhaps the most common repetitive pattern in the Hebrew Bible are the many cases of extended instructions followed by word-for-word descriptions of compliance to those instructions. This particular pattern is repetitive not so much at the word or phrase level (though it can be), but as with the majority of cases of semantic parallelism, is rather at the level of basic content and logic. It will be argued that once one understands one element of the structure as a summary, the unfolding falls into place and the whole makes more sense than otherwise would be the case. This structure also looks like an interruption in many cases (see below). As such, translators will perhaps wish to consider restructuring so as to remove the interruption. But restructuring would not always be practical (moving Gen 11:1-9 before Gen 10, for example), and such a restructuring would necessarily do away with either the summary statement or the return to the main narrative thread. Instead, understanding (and perhaps even translating) a phrase such as “And it happened like this...” between the summary and the unfolding reveals the structure of the pattern and makes the “interruption” disappear. This corresponds to the parallel structure in poetry necessitating (at least at times) in translation an addition of “not only... but even more so…”. What follows below are eleven different examples of this phenomenon of summary/unfolding, chosen for their clarity in illustrating the structure. The conclusion will deal with implications for translators, including possibly translating “And it happened like this...” in some languages and/or cases to clearly represent this often not-recognized narrative structure. 2. Examples: “And It Happened Like This”: Summary and Unfolding in Biblical Hebrew Narrative Structure / Robert A. Bascom 271 2.1. Creation 2.1.1. Text: Gen 1:1, 2ff: (1In the beginning when God created the heavens and the earth,4 2the earth was a formless void and darkness covered the face of the deep, while a wind from God swept over the face of the waters... 2:4These are the generations of the heavens and the earth when they were created5) 2.1.2. Commentary: Genesis 1:1ff is so well-plowed a field that one hesitates to comment further on it. The UBS Handbook for translators states: “All the ancient versions as well as many modern ones understand verse 1 to be an independent sentence, which serves as a general heading for the entire story of creation and affirms the creation of the earth in the formless state described in verse 2. Other scholars point out that the Hebrew form of the phrase translated In the beginning should be translated as a subordinate time clause, and so “In the beginning when God created…”6) Nahum Sarna seems to take the first view, and sees taking verse 1 as an independent clause as “a momentous assertion about the nature of God: that He is wholly outside of time, just as He is outside of space, both of which He proceeds to create.”7) Claus Westermann goes further: “The sentence in 1:1 is not the beginning of an account of creation, but a heading that takes in everything in the narrative in one single sentence...” 8) 4) All biblical citations are from the NRSV unless otherwise noted: B. M. Metzger, et. al., The New Revised Standard Version Bible (New York: Oxford University Press, 1990). 5) The text examples will be formatted to show the summary/unfolding structure more clearly, except for Genesis 14, where both the standard format and the summary/unfolding structure are represented. 6) Thus NRSV. But even in this case, a slight variant of our model “[And] It happened like this...” fits quite nicely here. 7) N. M. Sarna, Genesis (Philadelphia: Jewish Publication Society, 1989), 5. 272 성경원문연구 제35호 If one follows the summary/unfolding narrative structure to interpret the passage, 1:1 is taken as a kind of title or section heading, and what follows thereafter is an explanation/expansion of that general summary statement. Seeing it this way actually supports the interpretation of the focus of creation in Genesis as being that of order out of chaos more naturally than that of creation as ex nihilo (which is then simply not in view), since it throws the narrative back to the start of the story.

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